The Rock by Kanan Makiya Page B

the security of all Christian inhabitants of the Holy City—their families, property, churches, and crosses. That was his practice throughout the territories taken from the Byzantines. He had promised that no constraints would be put on individual Christians in matters of religion. He had promisedthat no site belonging to the Church or to an individual Christian would be expropriated, and no building demolished or forcibly converted into a mosque. That left the Christian character of the city dangerously entrenched, in Ka’b’s opinion. Where would the Believers settle? Where would they build their mosques? But Umar was not looking into the future when he made all his promises.
    In return for security, Umar demanded a ban on the building of new churches, cloisters, monasteries, and hermitages that were not expressly authorized by the Caliph. No Christian, were he or she so inclined, was to be dissuaded by his kin or by the Church from making submission to Muhammad, Messenger of the One and Only God. Church bells were to be tolled slowly at all times, and voices lowered during services. Voices were not to be raised during funeral processions, nor lights carried, especially not through streets inhabited by the Believers. Christian books should not be hawked for sale in any street frequented by Muhammad’s people, nor in their bazaars.
    In matters of attire and comportment, Christians should refrain from wearing caps or turbans similar to those worn by Muhammad’s people; they had to keep to their existing style of dress, wearing belts about their waists at all times. Nor could they dress their hair in the fashion of the Arabs or assume Arabic names. They could not cut Arabic inscriptions upon their signet rings; swords were not to be worn in public or new weapons purchased. Above all, Christians should not seek to discover the private affairs of Muslims through their slaves. Spying upon Believers in any way would not be tolerated. To all of this, including a poll tax, Sophronius had already indicated his agreement.
    “Our covenant with the Christians has been guided by your principle, O Ka’b,” Umar said, “that of the separation of categories.”
    “Separateness in all things has been ordained by God,” Ka’b replied. “It was present in the order of creation. Can a woman lie with a beast? Or a man eat flesh that is unclean? No. Because holiness is not abomination; it is separation. That is the reason,O Caliph, why I am urging you not to enter the Holy City in the company of Christians carrying palm leaves and idols.”
    “What do we know about this Sophronius?” Umar asked, ignoring my father’s desperate admonishment. The Caliph was more interested in his adversary’s bold step of demanding Umar’s presence as a condition of handing over Jerusalem without bloodshed. This was, after all, no common transfer of sovereignty. And Sophronius was the head of his Church, ruling from a city that had been the crown jewel of Christendom for three hundred years. It was the Christian who had asked to meet the Muslim face-to-face. The Caliph of God’s Apostle had therefore been honored by the Patriarch. Such a thing had never happened before, not even to the Prophet. Umar, normally so unyielding to ceremony, was flattered.
    But what kind of a man was his flatterer? Honorable or sly? Of genuine religious conviction, or a politician buying time while his emperor plotted in Constantinople to bail him out?

    K a’b’s informant was an old trading partner of his uncle’s, a Copt who had lived for many years in Alexandria. Sophronius, the Copt had said, had been born in Damascus a Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian. He had been brought up an emperor’s man, contemptuous of the local Christians he had grown up with. His eyes on the glories of Christ’s Empire, he felt hemmed in by the city of his birth. Alexandria, that staging post for all things Christian and Greek on the coast of Egypt, exerted a far greater attraction.